Welcome to Reality

It happened at a cafe in North Beach: my third eye opened. Not in a cyclops, mythological monster sort of way. I don’t wear a red dot there either, and for that matter hadn’t believed in or thought about the third eye until that day. I just looked up from my coffee and saw everyone with swirls of energy around them and it was friggin’ unnerving. Ethereal billows of color escaped from nearly every person, sometimes completely overwhelming passersby who didn’t seem to notice. People were popping out of their bodies left and right, floating on the ceiling while their corporeal containers went through the actions of ordering half-caff mocha lattes. Emotional spectrums bled like wet on wet watercolors, their seeping influence made me realize almost no one was feeling their own feelings. In this surreal cloud I was truly a party of one, an observer of an extraordinary scene. I looked back at my Americano, and saw words forming from a tiny plume of steam: “Welcome to Reality." The waitress startled me, and I wiped the words away as nonchalantly as I could. “Refill?” she asked. “Uh, no. Definitely no. Thank you. That is some kind of kick-ass coffee you make here!” She smiled sphinx-like and walked away, trailing spirals of whimsy and regret, and the faint scent of roses.